Mamata to Jaitley: Drop ‘draconian’ FRDI Bill

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Express photo by Partha Paul.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday, urged the Centre to not make the “draconian” Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill into a law to “ensure that the common people are saved from financial ruin’’.

The Bill, to be tabled in the Winter Session of Parliament, proposes to create a framework to oversee financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, non-banking financial services and stock exchanges in case of insolvency.

In a letter to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Banerjee wrote that she was “shocked” to find that the Centre is planning to introduce a Bill that is an “assault on the financial security of the poor and the middle class”.

She wrote: “This Bill completely shatters the age-old faith and trust that is reposed by the people in the banking system. It appears to me that this Bill will forcibly take away the hard-earned life savings of the common people, entrusted to banks, for bailing out one section of vested interests, who have siphoned off loans given to them by the banking system. This is tantamount to cheating the depositor (the common men and women) for no fault of theirs. This, in my view, is grossly unfair and totally unethical.”

She also said, “There is a deep apprehension among farmers, for whom cooperative banks are the mainstay for agricultural borrowing in far-flung areas.”

In its core-committee meeting on Friday, the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state had called the Bill “black” and “draconian” in nature.